Occupy Oakland is Dead. Long Live the Oakland Commune

For those of us in Oakland, “Occupy Wall Street” was always a strange fit. While much of the country sat eerily quiet in the years before the Hot Fall of 2011, a unique rebelliousness that regularly erupted in militant antagonisms with the police was already taking root in the streets of the Bay. From numerous anti-police riots triggered by the execution of Oscar Grant on New Year’s Day 2009, to the wave of anti-austerity student occupations in late 2009 and early 2010, to the native protest encampment at Glen Cove in 2011, to the the sequence of Anonymous BART disruptions in the month before Occupy Wall Street kicked off, our greater metropolitan area re-emerged in recent years as a primary hub of struggle in this country. The intersection at 14th and Broadway in downtown Oakland was, more often than not, “ground zero” for these conflicts.

I went on strike on November 2nd in Oakland. I am not from Oakland, nor do I live there. I live in the Central Valley of California, about an hour and a half away. I work two jobs. I pay a mortgage. I am a member of a union. According to the discourse of the mainstream media, I’m middle class. According to the welfare office, I live in poverty. According to the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement, I’m part of the 99%.

I consider myself neither. I am part of the working class, which through our waged and unwaged labors creates everything. But I am also a proletarian. I strive for a world without class, towards a human community free of capitalism. I have been an anarchist for over 10 years. I was not in Oakland when the camp was raided, but I had been to the occupation several times before and many of my friends, from former Panthers to anarchists, were involved. On the night of Tuesday, October 25th, I, along with thousands others, attempted to retake Oscar Grant Plaza. I returned the next night for the general assembly which called for a general strike. I returned for the strike and in the days that followed began working on this piece in response to some of the critics of the day’s events.(more…)

Last night, after one of the most remarkable days of resistance in recent history, some of us within Occupy Oakland took an important next step: we extended the occupation to an unused building near Oscar Grant Plaza. We did this, first off, in order to secure the shelter and space from which to continue organizing during the coming winter months. But we also hoped to use the national spotlight on Oakland to encourage other occupations in colder, more northern climates to consider claiming spaces and moving indoors in order to resist the repressive force of the weather, after so bravely resisting the police and the political establishment. We want this movement to be here next Spring, and claiming unused space is, in our view, the most plausible way forward for us at this point. We had plans to start using this space today as a library, a place for classes and workshops, as well as a dormitory for those with health conditions. We had already begun to move in books from the library.

Today is the day of the General Strike in Oakland, the first American general strike in over half a century. Reports from actions in Oakland are coming in: shops are closed in solidarity; unions are joining the action, including locals from the SEIU, UAW, Alameda Central Labor Council, Phillipine Airline Works, Berkeley Federation of Teachers, the IWW, and the Carpenters Union; and a series of marches are planned for today. Stay tuned for more media and analysis on this historic action that may augur the evolution of the occupation movement into a direct action movement.

Social rebels from around Oakland have descended upon Oscar Grant Plaza and have created a genuine, autonomous space free of police and unwelcoming to politicians. Whereas other occupations have invited the police and politicians, or have negotiated with them, Occupy Oakland has carved a line in the cement. That line of demarcation says: if you pass this, if you try and break up or over shadow this autonomous space, you are well aware, as observed over the last couple of years, what we are capable of.

This article is a report back on the first week at Occupy Oakland, a reflection on problems we have been facing and some thoughts on moving the occupation forward; onto some next level shit.(more…)